Would it be a cool idea to have a “Houston” annual tornament with:
UH
TSU
HBU
Rice
Perhapos Prairie View (unless I am missubg another Houston school)
Like they do in Philly?
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The Philly tournament works pretty well because the city actually has a number of teams that tend to be good. That isn’t so much the case in Houston.
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Philly has a good hoops scene so the event is pretty cool. Not sure if Houston is ready to support this but I think it would be cool. Play the games at the Toyota center.
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no, that would take up too much of our non con and most of them arent good on most years…there is nothing to gain…its who can knock of houston and if houston wins? oh well
the philly one works because all 5 are competitive in competitive conferences and can get atlarges…only penn in the ivy is the long shot
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San Jacinto used to have a great Basketball team that had the likes of Sam Cassel and Steve Francis…do they still play BB, and could they move up from Junior College ranks??
I believe that San Jac shuttered their program a little while ago…
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Yup, only baseball and softball programs remain. Soccer and volleyball went as well as hoops.
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I like the home and home with Rice and think it’s fine to schedule one or so of the others each year at home, but there’s no real upside in tying up our OOC schedule with something like that when there aren’t any real opportunities to pick up good wins.
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All we needed to do this year is substitute Alabama State for TSU and we will have played the other 3 teams. We always play a few gimme games anyway.
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FIFY
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It would be a nice, cheap way to get a few games in to start the season, no travel expense!
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I like the idea of a tournament with big city-named schools… U of Miami, U of Portland, U of Pittsburgh, etc…
Make it annual and rotate the site between each school.
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Couldn’t do Pitt and Miami though same conference. UCLA replacing one of those would be great.
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Back in the '60s coach Lewis and our Coogs used to host the Bluebonnet tourney along with Rice sometimes. Of course we never played Rice but the plus was that Texas Aggie came down and participated every year. Some great games between us and the Ags.
Coach Lewis was good friends with Aggie coach Shelby Metcalf.
One of my all time favorite quotes came from Shelby concerning the way the Aggies would get its draw in the four team tourney.
“Guy would call me every year,” Shelby said, “and would actually let me call heads or tails when he flipped a coin. Funny thing is that I never won a toss.”
In other words, no matter where the tourney was played the Aggies always drew the toughest team…lol, the good old days…
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Was trying to avoid the UC System… but if they’d come, I wouldn’t turn them down.
Throw in SDSU, U of San Francisco (The Dons… one of my favorite school mascots), Boston University…I think you could come up with an entertaining early season tournament.
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I’ve been surprised ever since Tilman bought the Rockets that he hasn’t scheduled a college double header at the Toyota Center with the Coogs and 3 other big time teams. I understand that the other schools would have to agree to it, but something like that ought to bring out a big crowd and be attractive for TV.
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Sure if we do home and homes with Rice and just play HBU, TSU and PVAMU every year at Fertitta in favor of one or two of our other buy games then that’s fine. But that’s nothing like the Philly city championship and there isn’t any particular reason to do it. Also, part of it is that those other teams need to play each other as well!
Tying up road games with PVAMU, TSU and HBU every other year or tying up neutral site games with those teams would be a non-starter. And I’m not sure what the neutral site would even be because that hypothetical tournament is nowhere close to something that should be at Toyota Center.
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I don’t think we are saying it would be the same as the Philly series. You have to start somewhere and it would be cool thing to play yearly.
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So you propose we play HBU/PVAMU/TSU at Fertitta every year with a home and home against Rice?
Do all the other teams have to play each other? Will those be home and homes? It seems kind of weird that we’re the best program by far and also basically play everyone at home while they conceivably play each other in home and homes (and Rice probably doesn’t want to do that either). We would win this “tournament” every single year.
It’s a nice thought but doesn’t really make any sense given where the area programs are at. Just playing those schools at Fertitta in a “University of Houston vs. Houston” challenge or whatever isn’t something anyone is going to really care about.
I’m not opposed to playing those teams at Fertitta, but it’s also not something you can market or really build anything around.
Don’t see the interest being there as teams are currently constructed. Not only is UH only top 100 team , the others are highly likely not in top 200 of 300+ teams that can qualify for MarchMadness.
Lot for Coogs to lose if neighbor rival was to upset them like Rice almost did last week.
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